Episode 38: How To Grow When The Wedding Market Gets Tough

Episode Summary

The wedding market can feel tough, friends, so today I’m talking about how we keep moving forward when business changes. I’m sharing my perspective on event volume, referrals, and why staying connected to past clients and vendor partners matters. We’ll also talk about building a pipeline beyond social media, keeping your message consistent, and delivering what you promise. I reflect on the post-COVID boom, competition, and the work it takes to reach people in a changing market. There isn’t one easy answer, but I hope this gives you a place to start.

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julianleaver.com | @julianleaver

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Full Episode Transcript

Look busy and you'll be busy. Look busy. Also be busy. Like this other thing. I flew to Paris. I flew to Spain. I flew. I'm flying to Greece. I'm flying to Miami. I'm flying to the Bahamas. I'm flying. Like be present and be relevant. You take more than four weddings a year. You do. This is, I think, the mentality. This is where the problem is that when you cut off your wedding load, you eliminate the referrals that come from those weddings. I would like to point everyone to the largest companies in the wedding business and the largest names in the wedding business. Marcy Blum, Michelle Rago, Bryan Rafanelli, Lynden Lane, Easton Events, Mindy Weiss. How many events do they do a year? 20s, 30. They have teams of people who do all of these events.

When you are doing that many events, all those people experience an event by you. All of those people become a referral. All of those people tell their friends. All of those people are like, oh my god, this is fucking amazing. And so I think this whole mentality of we saw this shrinking of the business of like, okay, I'm going to be bespoke. I'm going to only do four or five, a little weddings a year. If you lose one of those weddings, then all of a sudden you have lost a quarter or a fifth of your revenue. And also you've lost a quarter or a fifth of your referral sources. And so I think there was just this interesting trend to move towards that. And I feel very thankful that I didn't move in that direction because I think you keep your referrals.

That's how you keep everybody interested and experienced. And it was so fun in New York. We actually had someone whom they came up, one of the guests and they were like, oh my god, this is our fourth Julian Leaver event in the last two years. And they were like chef's kiss amazing had the best time, right? But like, how fun is that? That's part of this job. The fun of getting to see people again and again and also blow them away again and again and try to up your own game and you're competing against yourself in a lot of ways, right? I think there's this other mentality of trying to one up your own self. Clearly, pot kettle, okay? Hi, my name's Julian Leaver and I have been trying to one-up myself this year, right?

And every event I've been trying to be better and push a little harder and do something totally different. I'm so excited. In two weeks, we have this one that's two weeks ago, we had what we called the sherbet wedding. And it was like all these sherbet colors and it was so fabulous. And we've never done a palette like that. And then in two weeks, we have a grandma chic. They could not be more on the spectrum from each other. And then we did this, that cool 70s party in California. So it's like all of these, it's so different. And I think like more is more and that is better in a lot of ways, right? Push yourself to do more because it does push you to be better. And then that kind of, I don't know, it just reminds everyone that you do interesting, cool, fun work.

Well, it's just not a good business strategy. Now, it is a good business strategy if your strategy is to raise your children. Okay, that is a good business strategy, right? Like you want it's that season of life for you, whatever that might look like, right? You need to do a little bit less because it's a right season. But I don't think in the long term being a healthy professional in this field only doing four or five a year is a good plan because you don't have you're not doing the reps. You don't have a handle on what the business the business is doing. You don't have a handle on how the industry looks. You don't have a handle on what things cost and how it's changing and you can't inform your clients in the right way. I know, but it's highly accurate because everyone is freaking out.

But it's because you cut your nose off to spite your face at least one a month. You could do one wedding a month. It is our responsibility to help our clients understand what things cost. And so maybe you aren't getting the leads that are out there. But that's because you have not been cultivating your pipeline correctly. Hire a business consultant. That, friends, you can call me and I'll pay you $1,000, or you can pay me $1,000 an hour and I'll tell you exactly what to do. Yeah, because that that time of the universe is just different. I think it's about cultivating your network. It's about talking to your vendors. It's about being present. It's about seeing your clients. It's about seeing your past clients. It's about interacting with your past clients.

It's about doing the work that actually a lot of people don't like to do. And so when you look at those people that are at the top of their game and at the top of the field, and they've been around a very long time, they have a playbook that is working. And they have a huge pipeline. They have a huge pipeline of people. And so you have to lean into your pipeline. You have to cultivate your pipeline. You have to reach out to your pipeline. I would say that is no longer going to work as it's own as it as the only channel that you're getting everything from. I would say if you for the last few years have only been relying on social media as your only pipeline, that those days are over. That you are you have to do all these other things that then feed into the social media.

The social media is maybe the little gateway, right? I've always said this. The social media is just to say, Hey, I'm still in business. Everything is well. I posted yesterday, right? I'm active and I'm showing activity. But then you have to make sure that your message is consistent across the whole thing. That's very important is that what you're saying on social matches what you're saying on your website. Matches what you're saying in your call with people, people connect with people. You have to show them who you actually are. And so then that's going to be fun and be honest with them. There's this two pronged piece of it, right? And I would say to all the clients watching, you are looking for an expert. You are looking for someone who's going to make the process fun.

And you are also looking for someone who is going to be very honest with you because it takes all three of those things to be a good professional in this field, really in any field. Again, I think, yes, we talk the name of this podcast is clearly Mind Over Matrimony. But so much of this is applicable in every facet of business. And I think all the facets of business are having a hard time with this because I think for the last maybe five years, the culture has really been so focused on social and that's like where everything is going to come from. But the reality is that people really, they do business with people that they know and trust. And so if you can build that trust, and again, say what you're going to do, do it, and then follow through on it. That is the reality.

And I think I also think that the wedding market is shrinking. Like it is, I think a lot of people are saying, and I've always used the phrase in the wedding industry, there's enough business for everybody. But I actually don't think that there is. And I think that if you look at the statistics, let's talk about data for a second, right? This podcast is about data. If you look at the data that is released every year and year, the number of people who are getting engaged is less. We saw a massive boom in the industry post-COVID, 100%. And there was a pent up demand. There was also, oh my God, we're all going to die. So let's get married or let's get in our relationship or let's just go down this road. And for so many years, that paid off.

And I think a lot of people who are in this industry now joined not that long ago, right? Maybe just six years, seven years ago, when there has been this big boom and it looked like the wedding industry was like some great place to come join because it was booming, similar to real estate, I think. And we don't talk enough here about the fact that there is really a lot of competition that you really, you have to provide a very good, very concrete service to people and communicate what you're going to do and how you're going to do it. And have systems in place to back that up. So I don't know that there's a solution. I think it's more just look at what has worked for you in the past, examine that, break that down, understand that, and then see what happens from there.

I think people have gotten used to picking some very low hanging fruit and the fruit's a little higher now, right? There's global warming. So the fruit at the bottom is dead. It's just not that easy. You have to climb a little higher. That's okay. Build a bigger ladder. You can do it. It's doable, but you just have to think about it in a little bit of a different way.

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